As I mentioned at the end of my last post, it was strange to say goodbye to Donn, Rhoda & Sheila Marie in Pittsburgh and head to South Bend without them. It was made even stranger when I pulled into the driveway at the Westfall manse and there was nobody home! Donn & Rhoda were nice enough to not only let me stay in their home but they also loaned me their car to use. Dale and Joyce schlepped me out to the airport on Monday evening to return my rental car and took me to dinner afterwards. Michael was a gracious host and sat up talking with me most every night that I was in town. The whole Westfall clan could not have been more hospitable. On Thursday night, there were 9 Westfalls in the audience cheering for us!
TVFMHRW - Not exactly my hotel room, but the Westfall's kitchen window!
While I was comfortably ensconced in Edwardsburg, the show was playing the Morris Performing Arts Center in South Bend. The Morris began life as the Palace Theater in 1921. The Palace was a vaudeville house and a big stop on the circuit between Detroit and Chicago. After the fall off in vaudeville, the Palace hosted movies until it was scheduled for demolition in the late 1950's. A citizen's group saved the building and it became a performing arts center. In the 1990's, the stage house was removed and rebuilt to better suit modern touring productions, while the auditorium and public areas got a very nice renovation. That resulting building made a cozy home for Spamalot with just enough room for everything and everyone.
The Morris faces a small park and overlooks the Saint Joseph River
The restored interior of the Morris is quite lovely
It was a cold and snowy week in South Bend. It snowed, literally, every day that we were in town. Over the weekend, more than eight inches of snow fell. I was glad for the four wheel drive feature on the Jimmy Donn & Rhoda leant me, especially for some of the late evening drives home!
The snow even piled up on the fish ladder in the St. Joseph river
It was fun to be in a town that had some familiarity with (I knew how to get to the shopping centers along Grape Road when I needed some appropriate winter footwear and where to go for a hearty breakfast with Gurr and Suzanne) but that still had lots to explore. Though I've been visiting Sheila Marie and her family in the area for a long time, our visits are almost always about family and friends - we rarely do anything very touristy. That left me plenty to explore while I was in town.
South Bend is perhaps most famous as home to the University of Notre Dame du Lac, though the University actually lies outside of South Bend in the creatively named Notre Dame, Indiana. In my many years of rooting against the Fighting Irish, I had never seen their campus. I've mocked Touchdown Jesus, the Irish Guard and the Golden Dome, but I found the campus quite pleasant. Of course, the place was blanketed in fresh snow and there were no students around... I visited the Grotto and walked across the old part of campus (the so-called "God Quad") to snap a photo with "The Word of Life".
A view of the Main Building and the Golden Dome
I couldn't help it...
Beyond Notre Dame, South Bend is also famous for Studebakers. The Studebaker family arrived in South Bend in 1852 and set up shop as blacksmiths. They quickly began building and repairing wagons. With an influx of cash from a brother who made a small fortune providing wheelbarrows to the miners of the California goldrush, the Studebakers were able to fulfill a large order from the US army for wagons and start their own line of buggies. The first Studebaker cars were produced in 1897. These first cars were electric powered models, it wasn't until 1904 that the first gasoline powered Studebakers were produced. The company manufactured cars in South Bend until 1963 and eventually stopped manufacturing automobiles all together in 1966.
The Studebaker Museum stands as a testament to the company's proud history. It features examples of their early wagons and carriages alongside other notable horse-drawn vehicles from the Studebakers' personal collections (include the carriage that carried President Lincoln to Ford's Theater). The museum also has a large collection of Studebaker automobiles and military vehicles. They also had a display of British built sportscars while I was visiting.
My favorite car in the collection was this 1930's roadster.
The Studebaker logo - on earlier models it was a beautiful 3D set of silver wings. In fact, the South Bend minor league baseball team (the Silver Hawks) take their name from the Studebaker logo.
The Studebaker Mansion.
Today, Tippecanoe Place is a very nice restaurant. I visited with Dale and Joyce and then again with Graham and Cara. The house maintains is Victorian splendor with 4 floors of rooms for every imaginable purpose - even a bowling alley in the basement.
Next door to the Studebaker Museum, I learned more about the history of the region. The Northern Indiana Center for History featured exhibits on everything from the native peoples, the ecology of the St Joseph River Valley, the wide array of products manufactured in Michiana and even the All American Girls Professional Baseball League. (The South Bend Blue Sox were members for the entire existence of the league and were champs in 1951 and 1952.) The South Bend area was once a major manufacturing hub. Next door to the Studebaker mansion stands Copshaholm, the equally grand former home of the scions of the Oliver family. The Oliver Chilled Plow became a sensation after production began in 1857. From the walk-behind plow, the company went on to become a huge manufacturer of farm implements.
The revolutionary Oliver Chilled Plow - Oliver's tempering process made the iron less brittle
Change farming & you too can build a grand home like Copshaholm
There were two major events in Spamaland during our week in South Bend. We welcomed Richard Chamberlain to the company. Richard started rehearsals in New York a few weeks ago and joined us to start work with the touring company. From the little I worked with him, I can report that he is charming and a very gracious man. He'll rehearse with the company for another week in advance of his opening night as King Arthur in Chicago.
Sunday, the Broadway company of Spamalot wrapped up a run of 35 previews and 1,574 performances (good for the 44th longest run on Broadway) at the Shubert Theatre on Sunday. More than 2 million people passed through the doors of the Shubert in the 3 years and 10 months of its run and the Broadway company alone grossed $175,000,00. January has been rough on Broadway, it is always a tough month, but the nationwide economic debacle has hit the Great White Way hard. I have an awful lot of friends hitting the unemployment rolls and looking for temp work all the sudden. The shuttering of the Broadway company leaves only the Spamalot Tour (the London company also closed this month) carrying the banner. In the words of Peter Lawrence: "We're like Ethopian Jews, cut off from the homeland, but keeping the faith." I couldn't have said it better...
Sunday night, the crew loaded the trucks in the cold & snow, packing us up to head to Peoria.
Francesca snapped this great photo of the preparations for load-out
JV
Bonus press clipping. From the 1/7 South Bend Tribune review:
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